So with the changes to disc priest coming in pretty soon, I have been looking around for what others are doing for their new stat prioritization. Twistedmind seems pretty credible but I haven't seen comment on his video where he explains his stat prioritization: Int>Haste>Crit>Mastery (with crit and mastery being very close). What do you guys think? I feel his math is also credible so I will probably try this prioritization once 5.2 hits, but i want to know what you guys think.

Unfortunately I cannot link any of the videos or forums due to me being a new member of the threads, but Twistedmins's thread is easily found and is name "Twistedmind explains 5.2 changes (pvp & pve)" and the video link is on the 9th page.

Please do keep this thread specified on Disc and its prioritization please, I have seen too many threads change the entire topic completely without actually discussing about the question at hand. Thank You and have a wonderful Saturday.

I personally will be sticking with mastery>crit>haste (int and spirit as desired).

The main reason for this is the buff to PW:S means we'll be using it more often-and will have borrowed time up more often. So, we'll have most of the haste we need from that. Also, the primary reason for haste in my mind is for PoH spamming. With the nerf to PoH, I see that being used slightly less often.

Mastery vs crit is a tight one. However, I put mastery ahead because of its pure healing throughput change.

If you look at blizz' example of how disc priest crit will work with mastery, it looks something like this:

5.1: 50% mastery (+50% absorbs)
5.2: 33% mastery, +15% healing (I think the sum is slightly less than it was in 5.1, hence this not being 17%)

If my math is correct (it definitely might not be), this is a slight nerf to how big our crit heals are, but an increase in how much the total absorb is. I won't mind not critting often still, because mastery will now benefit penance and atonement even more, and we'll be using shield more often.

However, this makes crit a much more interesting stat than it is now, especially with PW:S critting.

Factoring in the additional spirit you need to make use of said haste it's the worst secondary throughput stat (which is true, since it has no affect on our cds, but I forgot to mention this:P), however it obviously have the massive advantage of being reliable (mastery does buff every spell but the lionpart of your mastery goes to your absorbsbut your absorbs gain more benefit, and this part is just as unreliable as crit, while increased crit chance does means that you can count on crits at least a bit more). Haste also makes heavy tankhealing (=significant gheal usage) way easier, this both devalues crit (GH lowers IF cd) and the cast time on GH without any haste is quite frankly too long to reliably keep the tank up. Personally I will probably prio a balance of crit and mastery (they scale off each other, so obviously) with crit having a slightly higher value (mainly because it also adds to our dps which, with atonement being even stronger in 5.2, will be very significant, crit also scales slightly better for atonement than other heals due to the meta trippledoubledipping). I am however playing with a paladin meaning that tankhealing won't be my first prio, in a different line-up it's very possible that I'd focus more on haste.

Sorry if my post is a bit of a mess, just home from a party.

Edit: Wasn't exactly expressing myself very clearly in my post yesterday (typing while smashed is bad, lets see if typing while hungover is better), clarifying a few things (lionpart was just an outright incorrect word:/)

Since haste has such an impact on mana usage and efficiency, I would go mastery/crit depending on which mode you are playing in.
For 25man crit might slightly pull ahead because of heavy PoH usage, altough with changes (huge f*cking nerfs) to DA this might not be accurate. (not a mathematical genius)
For 10man I would still go mastery because of heavy PW:S usage, although you could question this choice, since Crit would benefit atonement more which is also very prominent in 10man, I guess it's fight dependant whether there's a dmg multiplier.

crit also scales better for atonement than other heals due to the meta trippledipping).

Assuming this is based of the analysis linked from H2P there's an error near the bottom:

The corresponding atonement heal from that crit was 25947. I would have expected it to be a 10.755% increase (heal mastery) on a 3% increase of the original smite damage of 22082. That would have been 22082×1.03×1.10755=24457. This contains essentially two more 3% factors!

22082 x 1.03 x 1.10755 is not 24457. 22082 x 1.10755 is 24457.

Not a huge deal, but it's double dipping (the same way it does on live) not triple dipping.

Not a huge deal, but it's double dipping (the same way it does on live) not triple dipping.

and here I thought it sounded strange at first, but apparently failed to check the numbers thoroughly before changing my mind and being convinced, which is the least I should have done. In my defense I'm rarely able to get on the ptr (character not found:P), and when I do things aren't working properly, (or is atonement not benefitting from crits at all for everyone else?) so I can't test most things myself. You are entirely correct, I'm sorry.

Actually the lion share of the new version of mastery comes from the guaranteed increase to heals, rather than the absorption increase on crits. Even if we had 100% crit chance, the 1.6% per 1 mastery would apply to half of the total heal(base value from which mastery increases), making it worth .8% per 1 mastery which is equal to the guaranteed increase portion. (may be slightly higher depending on how the meta works with this new way of critting) Obviously we do not have 100% crit. Not even close.

The reliable portion of mastery to our heals is approximately half that of haste rating depending on how much you have of each stat. If your concern is burst potential without regard to mana efficiency, haste is the way to go. Overall crit vs mastery will be fairly similar in value where crit wins if you want the increased dps, and mastery wins if you want reliability(something healers like to always argue for). Otherwise take your pick of the two that you feel most comfortable with, or a blend. They do feedback off each other.

Haste is the best throughput stat even when factoring in the extra spirit, because spirit is better return than intellect even at 1:1 especially for people in hc gear. Crit and mastery are both a lot less value than haste on paper, but because our cooldowns are now a much bigger part of our HPS haste is devalued.

Gems should be spirit as much as possible, then int/mastery/crit.

Right now the best strat is to gear for balanced mastery/crit using the formula

crit = (0.4+mastery*(3+mastery))/(4.8+3.2*mastery).

Int is always better value than crit and mastery until you hit 70k spellpower or so, but for gems it depends on how much crit and mastery you currently have. The break point is somewhere between 35 and 38ksp.

If you find you don't run oom, then stack haste first until you use up your mana then back to crit/mastery